The educational materials listed on this page are about Nutrient Management.
A nutrient management plan is used to manage the application of plant nutrients and soil amendments. Integrated nutrient management may include utilizing variable rate application, soil inoculants, microbial inoculants, biologicals, foliar feeding and proper fertigation techniques and fertigation systems. An understanding of nutrient cycling can also aid in budgeting and supplying nutrients for plant production, while minimizing soil and water pollution. Farmers can harness the power of the nitrogen cycle by using organic fertilizer and manure to supply plant nutrients. Careful nutrient management can also improve the overall condition of soil, especially if your plan includes cover crops. Key practices include biological inoculants, nutrient cycling, fertigation, organic fertilizers, reduced applications, foliar feeding, municipal wastes, cover crops.
Building Soils for Better Crops, a book offered by SARE, helps farmers navigate ecological soil management strategies. A useful bulletin, Smart Water Use on your Farm or Ranch, addresses the role of water in a farm system and in nutrient management. The Season Extension: Fertility Management Topic Room helps producers gain knowledge of effective and proper fertility management techniques, including fertigation, to improve nutrient cycling on a farm. What is Sustainable Agriculture? provides information on best practices the encourage the stewardship of land, water and air resources.
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What is Sustainable Agriculture?
This award-winning report provides a sampler of best practices in sustainable agriculture—from marketing and community vitality to cover crops and grazing—as well as eight profiles of producers, educators and researchers who have successfully implemented them.
Building Soils for Better Crops
The fourth edition of Building Soils for Better Crops—enhanced and expanded—explains how to use ecological principles to build soil health and boost fertility, yields and overall sustainability.
Smart Water Use on Your Farm or Ranch
As producers throughout the nation grow increasingly concerned about water scarcity, farmers, ranchers and agricultural educators are beginning to explore new, conservation-oriented approaches to water use.
Cover Crop Economics
Cover crops can build soil health, control weeds, conserve moisture, provide grazing opportunities and more. But when do they start to pay for themselves? This analysis looks at the economics behind different management scenarios to determine if cover crops are likely to improve profitability in one, three or five years of use in corn and soybean rotations.
What is Soil Health?
Soil health plays an essential role in raising healthy, productive crops and livestock. With this interactive infographic, learn how practices such as cover crops, no-till, crop rotation and the integration of livestock work in concert to improve soil health.
Economic and Environmental Aspects of Cover Crops
Economics of Cover Crops Business Opportunities with Cover Crops and Soil Health Environmental Impacts of Cover Crop Systems
Cover Crop Role in the Cropping System
Cover Crops and Nutrient Management Cover Crop Impacts on Diseases and Insects Cover Crops, Herbicides and Dealing with Herbicide-Resistant Weeds
Cover Crops as Part of an Overall Nutrient Management System
In this session, Steven Mirsky (USDA-ARS) and Heather Darby (University of Vermont) discuss the role of cover crops in integrated fertility management and address cover crops in the context of forages, dairies, perennials and pastures, and rotating pasture to grain.
Managing Cover Crops for Ecosystem Services in Vegetable Systems
Natalie Lounsbury (University of New Hampshire) discusses how to manage cover crops for such ecosystem services as: suppressing weeds, attracting pollinators, cycling nutrients, promoting biological diversity and controlling erosion.
Investing in the Next Generation of Agricultural Scientists
Sustainable solutions to today's agricultural challenges arise when scientists, educators and producers work together to test theories in real-world, on-farm situations. For this approach itself to be sustainable, there must be opportunities for the next generation of agricultural scientists to use collaborative, applied research to address the real-world needs of farmers and ranchers. The SARE Graduate Student grant program is one such opportunity—since 2000, the program has supported the work of 600 master's and Ph.D. students.